Look what David Pryce-Jones did. He set up a parallel that
involves the American Secretary of State John Kerry, and the Israeli minister
of defense Moshe Ya'alon. He vilified the American for what he said and did;
and he sang the praises of the Israeli for what he said and did. He then ended
his article with this sentence: “Ya'alon told the truth. 'What is truth? said
jesting Pilate and would not stay for an answer.'” And like Pilate, the
restless David Pryce-Jones quickly existed the scene.”
There is a lot more to the article which came under the
title: “John Kerry and the truth” and was published in National Review Online
on January 21, 2014. From the start, you get the feeling that the author is
setting himself up to do what a suicide bomber would do, which is to blow
himself up in the end. Pryce-Jones gives you that hint as he begins the article
like this: “Moshe Ya'alon is probably the best minister of defense since Moshe
Dayan.” Well, people who know their history know that incompetent Dayan went
berserk during the 1973 war, and ended up in a mental hospital.” Is the other
Moshe ripe to repeat the performance? The author seems to say yes.
But why would Pryce-Jones do what he did? This is like
asking why do suicide bombers do what they do. There is no rational answer to
give in both cases but there is a difference to which you can point. It is that
the young bombers are programmed by their elders to believe they have a cause
for which they are best suited to sacrifice their lives. As to our aging
literary suicide bomber, he seems to have realized that nobody is taking his
madness seriously, so he stopped taking himself seriously as well. Seeing that
he was going nowhere dishing out all the nonsense he has been spewing, he
thought it would be nice to go out in a massive and glorious flash.
The nonsense that the writer has been advancing in this
current article is the same old nonsense that Israel and all the Jewish writers
who write on the subject have been advancing for decades. It is that “now” is
never the right time to ask Israel
to end the occupation of Palestine .
Why is that? Because there is always something that must be done first
somewhere else in the world. And when there is nothing happening, they always
find an excuse that sounds as silly as saying there must be someone out there
wearing brown shoes on a Wednesday; go find him before asking Israel to end
the occupation.
Another point that Pryce-Jones makes is also an old and worn
out argument. It is to the effect that anything Israel
does to secure peace will represent a mortal danger to Israel , and to
all the Jews around the world. And so, the conclusion they reach, each time and
every time, is represented in the following message which they never cease
giving to the Americans: “Give us all that we ask for in terms of money and
weapons, then vanish till we get into trouble at which time feel obliged to
come and rescue us.”
And then, out of ignorance or malice – depending on how well
he remembers the history of the region – Pryce-Jones brings up the subject of
the Palestinians being split into two camps. He says there is Fatah, and there
is Hamas, and he makes the point that “Ya'alon clinches his case with the
observation that the Israeli army is all that maintains Abbas [President of
Fatah] in power.” This would be an irony brought to light out of malice if the
author were aware that Hamas was created by Israel to undermine Fatah. It would
be an act of woeful ignorance if he did not know this history.
Still, he finds time to stab his own credibility in the
heart before committing the final act of literary suicide. First, he ignores
the fact that the Palestinians have accepted the long sought request that they
recognize Israel's right to exist on their land – which they formally did long
ago. Second, he ignores the reality that the Israelis have not reciprocated by
accepting the Palestinian right to have a state of their own, a fact they
negate by their continued occupation of Palestine .
And so, as he stands on those two historical powder kegs,
the author gleefully sings the following incendiary words: “Kerry's fancies are
met persistently by Palestinian insistence that they will never accept a Jewish
state.”